Ether
Sep 16, 2006, 10:18 PM
Contrary to popular belief I hate Ranger. I also suck at playing it. I am frustrated by it, and from this frustration came a wacky plan to see how I could reduce my effectiveness in combat. This guide is the result and explains how to play Ranger without ever doing any damage from L1 to L14 (where I'm at now, I haven't done any damage, or helped party speed up kills) and probably higher.
Basically your "job" in PSU is to run around with a gun and not damage enemies so they kill your party. You use Ice bullets to freeze them in place for half a second, you use Lightening bullets to paralyze them (works great on mage types), you use Earth to mute them, and Fire.. well Fire does damage so I haven't tried it extensively yet, my goal is to not do any damage, doing that won't really help your party die as much as say Ice.
Whatever you do, don't use Rifles or Dual Pistols, they both have a very high application rate of your debuff of choice and tie for the highest damage output of any Ranger-only guns. They aren't even expensive to refill with PP as the game goes on. Over time you might spend hundreds of meseta on them, but will always end up with more money than when you started, and you should have no money troubles when it comes time to buy 18,000 (or higher) armor and 30,000 weapons.
The alternative, which competely gimps any damage output you may have is not easy. It is difficult, because you must swallow your pride and accept that no matter how hard you try, you won't do quite the damage of a L1 FO with L1 foie and starter gear.
What you will do however is your job, and fairly well. As long as you're a huge waste of a party slot, your FO and HU friends can take on enemies and come out severly harmed, and the essentially free method of doing that (compared to doing damage) is this:
Roll an RAcast (or whatever)
Equip your starting Handgun
Equip your starting Saber
Simple, no? Now all you have to do is shoot every enemy once while strafing, then let your party do the rest of the work. Note that I didn't say spam your Bullets. You will never need to buy PP at a cube if you learn how to only shoot each enemy once, for as little damage as possible.
The most damning thing about Ranger is that if you use a Rifle up and swap weapons, that Rifle stays empty until you either way for it to refill while not attacking, or go bite the bullet (lol) and pay 30 whole meseta for a refill. The only option left to you if you want to avoid being raped constantly by PP cubes is to use the 1 gun / 1 melee set up as it regens PP on both weapons simultaneously. Not only that, single Handguns have an interesting feature: They have terrible damage. I'm talking 2-4 damage a shot. While these are not large numbers, if you try playing with DH for an hour, then swap to single Handgun you will definitely notice how much less damage you do (especially if make sure not to use Fire bullets).
Now what really seals the deal is the Saber. Even if you can't get it to do damage, you still get to run up to enemies, quickly get surrounded, leaving yourself prone to massive ass whuppings on the ground while rest of your team watches you die. 2 good examples of enemies this is incredibly common on are the boss claw monsters in Rafon 1-2 (with the shields on one arm), and the giant beasts that drop 300 meseta in Relics. You can ineffectively melee these enemies and get yourself killed very easily, which your team will love.
So basically, you get to be incredibly inactive and unaware of the battle at all times. You are wasting space with this method. Why? Your damage sucks. Horribly. Worse than a normal Ranger using Rifles even. Handguns do not do a lot of damage, and I have not had time to see if Machine Guns are viable to use in this set up. My prediction is that they do not do a lot of damage either, so they may be great for this method.
Basically the best way I can describe this is that it feels like I'm playing in PSO's Challenge Mode at all times. You're completely abandoning what little damage capability you had with Rifles and Dual Handguns in the interest of being a cheap ass, which will hopefully benefit you in the long run, but certainly not your team. Anyways, maybe it only feels like Challenge Mode because I only do about 2 damage a shot.
What I tell you for sure is that you will spend a LOT of time in melee range getting your ass kicked, and you will not be as good a contribution to your party as a random other player with a good rifle who just stands back and shoots like a ranger should.
Whew.. and that is it for my book post on how to play Ranger for "free" while still going balls to the fucking wall all out offensive.
Basically your "job" in PSU is to run around with a gun and not damage enemies so they kill your party. You use Ice bullets to freeze them in place for half a second, you use Lightening bullets to paralyze them (works great on mage types), you use Earth to mute them, and Fire.. well Fire does damage so I haven't tried it extensively yet, my goal is to not do any damage, doing that won't really help your party die as much as say Ice.
Whatever you do, don't use Rifles or Dual Pistols, they both have a very high application rate of your debuff of choice and tie for the highest damage output of any Ranger-only guns. They aren't even expensive to refill with PP as the game goes on. Over time you might spend hundreds of meseta on them, but will always end up with more money than when you started, and you should have no money troubles when it comes time to buy 18,000 (or higher) armor and 30,000 weapons.
The alternative, which competely gimps any damage output you may have is not easy. It is difficult, because you must swallow your pride and accept that no matter how hard you try, you won't do quite the damage of a L1 FO with L1 foie and starter gear.
What you will do however is your job, and fairly well. As long as you're a huge waste of a party slot, your FO and HU friends can take on enemies and come out severly harmed, and the essentially free method of doing that (compared to doing damage) is this:
Roll an RAcast (or whatever)
Equip your starting Handgun
Equip your starting Saber
Simple, no? Now all you have to do is shoot every enemy once while strafing, then let your party do the rest of the work. Note that I didn't say spam your Bullets. You will never need to buy PP at a cube if you learn how to only shoot each enemy once, for as little damage as possible.
The most damning thing about Ranger is that if you use a Rifle up and swap weapons, that Rifle stays empty until you either way for it to refill while not attacking, or go bite the bullet (lol) and pay 30 whole meseta for a refill. The only option left to you if you want to avoid being raped constantly by PP cubes is to use the 1 gun / 1 melee set up as it regens PP on both weapons simultaneously. Not only that, single Handguns have an interesting feature: They have terrible damage. I'm talking 2-4 damage a shot. While these are not large numbers, if you try playing with DH for an hour, then swap to single Handgun you will definitely notice how much less damage you do (especially if make sure not to use Fire bullets).
Now what really seals the deal is the Saber. Even if you can't get it to do damage, you still get to run up to enemies, quickly get surrounded, leaving yourself prone to massive ass whuppings on the ground while rest of your team watches you die. 2 good examples of enemies this is incredibly common on are the boss claw monsters in Rafon 1-2 (with the shields on one arm), and the giant beasts that drop 300 meseta in Relics. You can ineffectively melee these enemies and get yourself killed very easily, which your team will love.
So basically, you get to be incredibly inactive and unaware of the battle at all times. You are wasting space with this method. Why? Your damage sucks. Horribly. Worse than a normal Ranger using Rifles even. Handguns do not do a lot of damage, and I have not had time to see if Machine Guns are viable to use in this set up. My prediction is that they do not do a lot of damage either, so they may be great for this method.
Basically the best way I can describe this is that it feels like I'm playing in PSO's Challenge Mode at all times. You're completely abandoning what little damage capability you had with Rifles and Dual Handguns in the interest of being a cheap ass, which will hopefully benefit you in the long run, but certainly not your team. Anyways, maybe it only feels like Challenge Mode because I only do about 2 damage a shot.
What I tell you for sure is that you will spend a LOT of time in melee range getting your ass kicked, and you will not be as good a contribution to your party as a random other player with a good rifle who just stands back and shoots like a ranger should.
Whew.. and that is it for my book post on how to play Ranger for "free" while still going balls to the fucking wall all out offensive.